Requiem for a Dream [Blu-ray/DVD] [Canadian; Steelbook]

For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut, PI, director Darren Aronofsky chose to adapt a tough and meaty piece of work: Hubert Selby's 1968 novel REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. However, in Aronofsky's frenetic, visionary, unique, and disturbing style lies the perfect setting for this story of four people whose intertwined lives are filled with eternally hopeful despair. This is a different sort of horror film. Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) are lovers in Brooklyn with dreams of setting up a small business and spending the rest of their lives in love--their version of the American dream. The two are also desperate heroin addicts, a compulsion that darkens their lives and leads Harry to repeatedly pawn his mother's television. His mother, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), is addicted to television, which is why she keeps replacing the stolen set. One day she receives a call from her favorite show, the surreal TAPPY TIBBONS SHOW, and learns that she has been selected to appear on an upcoming broadcast. When she can't fit into her best red dress, her doctor prescribes diet pills (uppers), to which she swiftly and painfully becomes addicted. Harry's cohort, an intelligent hustler named Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), completes the foursome. With its unflinching dissection of addiction, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a psychologically disturbing, visually captivating depiction of lost hope. The last half hour of the film is among the most harrowing of any film ever made.

"...Ms.Connelly has never before done anything to prepare us for how good she is here....[The film's] full-on assault blazes through the central nervous system..."New York Times

"...Both the direction and performances are Oscar-deservingly outstanding....REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is so devastating that it resonates like the echo of a dying scream..." -- 4 out of 5 starsTotal Film

"...One of the most disturbing movies ever made...yet it's impossible to take your eyes off it..." -- Rating: AEntertainment Weekly

"...Aronfsky's second film is even more visually jazzy than his first....The result is highly impressive: a swooping, gut-churning assault on the senses..."Sight and Sound

"...Aronofsky is so compelling, so visionary a filmmaker, he keeps us riveted to his film..."Los Angeles Times

"...Fascinating....Aronofsky brings a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel..."Chicago Sun-Times

"...Burstyn gives an award-caliber performance that is as raw and riveting as the movie that contains it..."Rolling Stone